The bronzes of Pik L will arrive early next week, YAY! Then I will take them to my basemaker, Diane Soper of Sistermaide Woodworking (www.sistermaide.com) and we'll work together to mount them on their bases ("work together" = Diane does all the work and I hold the bronze upside down in my lap while she gets the base lined up and bolted on). The photos from the foundry of the patina work are fabulous, but I won't share them here - the lighting is harsh and makes the sculpture look bad, but the color just sings! I'll post pics when I get some of him mounted on his base.

Today I made the mold for the relief bust that will be on plaques the award winners can take home. My studio is always cold and the mold material has to be cast at 73 degrees, so I put my space heater on the counter by the mold box and also put a light right over the bust and the mold material jugs to warm everything up. When the thermometer I also had sitting there said it was between 72 and 75, I cast the mold. Hopefully it will be a good one! I don't cast molds nearly as often as I should to stay in practice, but they're expensive to cast and I don't really need to cast any for practice. I actually do have a clue about what I'm doing!

I started cleaning up my studio (again . . . it's an ongoing process), organizing pictures and tools, cleaning tools and working surfaces, etc. to get ready for my next piece, which will be a 3D bronze of a 1/8th lifesize Grand Prix horse and rider doing a piaffe. I told our daughter years ago that when her horse got to Grand Prix, I'd sculpt him, so here I am, keeping my promise! I'll start on it at Equine Affaire. I'm excited about it - I haven't done one with a rider in a while, and that's always an interesting challenge! I hope it gets chosen to be a trophy at a big show like many of my others have.

When John and I were in Florida visiting our daughter, Jen Truett, recently, she was showing in the National side of the Palm Beach Dressage Derby. I was so excited to be there, not only because she's showing GP in such a prestigious show, but two of my bronzes are trophies for that show! "Harmony" is the GP Freestyle trophy and "Harmony" the Grand Prix trophy, both for the CDI part of the show. John, Jen and I got to see "Harmony" presented at the Freestyle. That was so exciting for me!

Happy Spring, y'all! I hope to see you at Equine Affaire in Ohio, April 7-10! I'll be in the Bricker building, booth 529-530. I'm on the left side of the center aisle, facing the main doors, and you can see my booth from the doors. Hope to see you there!

I've been remiss in posting to my blog - sorry! My latest bronze is Pik L, an elite Hanoverian stallion who is a Grand Prix dressage horse. He's currently at the foundry being cast in bronze. One piece will be a trophy, and he will also be available in an art edition if you'd like to buy one.

This halter-type pose is appropriate for the trophy this piece will be used for (I can't say more about that yet, sorry). Normally, I do action pieces, and since he's a Grand Prix horse, I would've loved to do an action pose of him at work, but it was also interesting to work on a static pose for a change. I did manage to get some movement in his hair from an imaginary slight breeze. I like how this sculpture turned out, and the owner is very happy with it, yay!

The base under the horse will only be about 1/4" thick on the bronze. I had to build it up with Styrofoam boards to reach his feet because I didn't have pipes the right length to get his feet closer to the working surface. He will be mounted on walnut bases, both for the art edition and the trophy. The trophy base will be elegant and have enough brass plates for it to be awarded for 10 years.

In addition to the trophy, the owner ordered "take away" awards, so the winners have something to take home since this is a perpetual trophy. I'm still working on the relief for those awards, but I can show you "in progress" pictures of it. The sculpture on the take home awards is a relief, which I will cast myself in resin and finish to look like bronze.

This horse isn't fat - Grand Prix horses have monster abs due to the collected work they do. They lay on massive muscles all over their bodies, and their rumps actually change shape as the muscling builds, but the abdomen of a Grand Prix horse is surprising if you don't know what you're looking at. I've seen this kind of remodeling going on with my daughter, Jennifer Truett's, Grand Prix horse, Lafayette HQ ("Taffy"). He went from being very slender and lightly built to a muscular powerhouse who is sttil laying on Grand Prix muscles since he's only been doing GP less than a year. Eventually, he may look like Pik L. GP horses are the Arnold Schwarzenegger's of the equine world.

I just told someone I'm coaching that this quote about writing, "Kill your darlings," applies to art, too. You can't fall in love with a piece to the point where you freeze up when you need to fix it. You have to be able to rip, shred and tear into your piece (this is why I use plastilene - stone and wood sculptors would have a problem with this!) to perfect it.

You will learn more from tearing into your piece and making it right than you will from deciding it's finished while it's still not right. It's HARD and FRUSTRATING (and sometimes terrifying!) to tear in to what looks like a nice piece, but the results will be so much better after you've done it - believe me, I've cut off noses to build heads longer or shorter, I've cut all the way down to the armature to redo something, I've lifted more tails than I can count when they wound up too low, I've ripped out eyes and re-positioned them over and over and over on the same piece to get them right from every angle. Remodeling the piece is PRACTICE which helps you get it perfect, and helps you learn how to make the next piece better in less time.

I was working on "Just Trying to Help" (below) in my booth at Equine Affaire in Mass. a few years ago when I realized her neck was WAAAY too long. Since I'm used to building adult horses, I'd given her an adult neck - and a lovely one it was, too. Her head was PERFECT for a foal, but that neck had to be shortened, so I cut the neck behind her head, declared "OFF with her head!" and ripped it off, resulting in a *gasp* from the dozen or so people standing behind me who I hadn't noticed. I cut about an inch out of her neck, cut off the excess armature wire and put her head back in place. After working for a while longer, I grumbled, "I'm going to have to cut her head off again," speaking to myself. A woman who was browsing questioned me about it and stayed for over an hour waiting for me to actually do it. When I finished what I was working on and was ready to deal with her neck again, I cut her neck right behind her head, declared, "OFF with her head!" with an evil chuckle, and heard more gasps. But as you can see from the bronze below, cutting her neck shorter was the right thing to do, despite the fact it was beautifully detailed and perfect - it was just too long. Her head was perfect too, but I had to yank it off and chance ruining it to get to that neck and armature wire.

My point is, don't fall in love with your pieces while working on them. You have to be ruthless with your work, cutting, pushing, pulling, doing whatever is necessary to get the piece to be what you want, not just what it winds up being. You will learn more from "killing your darlings" and reworking them than you will from just letting something go because it's "good enough." Never stop pushing yourself! Kill your darlings and learn from the process!

I really liked my blog on Blogger, but now that Google has taken over my computer and won't let me sign in to Blogger with my Yahoo address, I can't add to it. If you want to read some good posts, click the Blog link in the "Follow Me" tab at the top of this page to get to that blog. That's where I talked about making "Anton," which is my newest bronze (and a handsome guy he is, too!).

In other news, I'm working on a Hanoverian stallion (at left, still in fairly rough form) that's turning out well so far, and I'm finishing up my book on horsekeeping. The book has kept me busy for a year and a half, and I foresee a long period of editing, cutting, adding to, getting more or better photographs, etc., before it's ready to publish. But it's GOOD! Those who've read it are really impressed with the amount of detail and information I've included, and that it's understandable (not too jargon-ish). I'm excited about both the book and this sculpture. It's been a while since I've done non-hairy legs (I've done quite a few Friesians in a row), so I've been teased that I might not remember how to do "naked" legs, LOL! Ha! I have a trick - on all those Friesians, I've sculpted the detailed leg first, then added the hair! So yeah, I still know how to do details on "naked" legs!

He started like this - like all of them do. He looks a lot better now!

Bizkit is Lynn Schmidt's imported Baroque Pinto (half Friesian/half Dutch Warmblood) stallion. He's a handsome guy with a sweet personality. I really enjoyed getting to know him. Lynn lives about 40 miles from me, so I went to her farm and took videos, photos and measurements of Bizkit so I could do a really good commission. I do a lot of commissions from photos alone, but it's so much better for me to be able to take measurements and detail photos myself, so I get the information I really need.

I used Adobe Premiere Elements 11 to do freeze-frame image captures to get various pose pictures for this piece. Lynn had given me a beautiful shot by Cally Matherly that she wanted me to sculpt, but it's about a 7/8 front view and I need profile shots to get the measurements right, to get the leg angles right, etc. I found one of my pictures that was close to Cally's in pose and used that for the information I needed. The facial expression and mane position is totally from Cally's photo. (She gave permission for this use and will get photo credit on the bronze.)

This piece has taken me a really long time to sculpt because he's only half-Friesian, so his feathering is quite different from what I'm used to. I can do clean-legged horses, I can do horses with normal small feathers on their fetlocks, I can do Friesians, which means I could do Clydes, Vanners, Shires with no trouble. But Bizkit's light feathering gave me trouble. I would put feathers on, sculpt them until I thought they were right, and they were WRONG! To heavy, too dense, too Friesian. Not Bizkit. Finally, after much frustration, I came up with a way to do it that both looks like him and pleases me artistically. I'm REALLY happy with how he's turning out! He'll be finished very soon. I just have a bit of cleanup to do now. Progress photos are shown below. The piece of Styrofoam under him in the last "almost done" picture is to keep the clay I put under there as "ground" from being too thick. He's suspended just a little bit above that blue board and I will put the clay on top of the board to make the ground. I will ship him to the foundry with him suspended above the ground so the clay ground can't pull on his legs and possibly get them out of alignment. Marks on the ground will show the foundry where he is to be attached.

When I had a big sale last fall, I decided to spend the profit not only on casting some of my own pieces and advertising, but also on taking some workshops. I haven't taken any in quite a while, and I wanted to take some "different" workshops to explore my creativity, learn about different media and techniques and so on. So early this year, I chose two workshops from the American Academy of Equine Art, one with Morgen Kilbourne and one with Lisa Perry, and a figurative workshop with Phillipe Farault. I thought I'd fit other things in around those.

The workshop with Morgen was a lot of fun and I finally learned how to use Apoxie Sculpt (an epoxy type clay, mix two equal parts together and it hardens) and a lot of other things, as well as discovering new tools (always a pleasure!) and making new friends. Morgen's techniques are quite different from mine, so I learned a lot from her. It's really good for me to stretch myself and get outside my comfort zone.

The Lisa Perry workshop is for jewelry. It will be in the fall, and I'm really looking forward to it. I enjoy Lisa as a person (we could gab for hours, and have done so when I see her at the Quarter Horse Congress - she's a fun lady!) and I do need to polish my jewelry skills, so I'm excited to take this one.

My next workshop is with Phillipe Farault, a figurative artist who lives in upstate New York, a beautiful area. He works in water-based clay, which I really don't enjoy working in very much and avoid as much as possible. Because I want to learn as much as possible from him, I started taking clay classes at the local YMCA (Countryside Y in Lebanon, Ohio) to get used to working in water-based clay again. Most of the folks there are making pots or little animals or folk art Nativities or decorative or useful things for the home. Then there's me, trying to do sort of realistic sculptures on a tiny scale (not my best idea!!). The lady pictured (prior to firing) was my first attempt. She has lovely movement in her hair and dress, but her body could use some improvement. Her face turned out nicely, but the grog (bits of fired clay incorporated to make the clay have a stronger body and not be so mushy) was big enough in comparison to her than when I brushed a piece off the end of her nose, most of the end of her nose disappeared! I've since done some cartoony kind of stuff, a dragon and two horses, all whistles (for fun and because the sweet and generous Norma The Whistle Lady joins us in class most of the time). From this class, I have learned that while I'm a good sculptor (within my limitations - that lady was too small for me to get good detail, although I bet Tamara Bonet could do it!), I'm not very good at painting on underglazes! Good thing I mostly do bronze since I'm not such a good painter. Either my glazes are uneven or I miss a spot or I smear it somewhere. *sigh* But it's all fun and adds to my education.

Yes, I'm a professional sculptor. Yes, I do good work, but yes, I still have a lot to learn and I'm happy to learn what I can, where I can, and to share what I know if it will help others, too ("paying it forward" to thank those who've shared their expertise with me). It's good for me to stretch myself and to take workshops outside my comfort zone. It's good to do work that doesn't satisfy my standards (such as what I've done in this water clay class - it's decent, but not good enough that I would ever offer such things for sale or put them in a show). It's all a growing process, and if you aren't growing, you're stagnant. So when I can, I'll keep struggling along in workshops where I have no idea what I'm doing as well as those that improve upon what I already know. I'm looking for one that combines stained glass, which I did before I started sculpting, with clay - I think that would be great fun! Stay tuned to see what I get up to next! (And yes, sculpting horses for bronze is still going on. I'll be posting pics of my current work in progress soon.)

I'm very happy to say "Flights of Fiction," an anthology that includes one of my stories, will be released April 15, 2013! It's a trade paperback and can be ordered either through me directly (Lynda@thesculptedhorse.com) or from Amazon for $11.95 plus shipping. If you order it from me, I'll be happy to autograph it for you!

"Flights of Fiction" was created at the request of a publisher who approached the leader of the Western Ohio Writers Association (WOWA), who then invited all the members to submit stories for potential inclusion. I was actually a bit shocked when my fertile imagination came up with a suspense/horror story about an aspiring writer - and then that story was accepted! So YAY!

There will be a launch party May 3 at 7 PM at Blue Jacket Books, 30 S. Detroit St., Xenia OH, where all the authors will do readings and book signings. There will be refreshments and a lot of fun! It's also the first First Friday in Xenia, so there will be fun, food and interesting stuff going on in the streets of Xenia as well as in the Blue Jacket Book Store.

I hope to see you at the book launch party! And if you order the book, I hope you will enjoy it!

We've lived in our new home since October 2012 - that's not to say we're all moved in, even now, but we've lived here that long now. My studio and office still have boxes that need to be unpacked, but things are progressing nicely and the "end of the tunnel" is in sight, yay! We're painting the old house to get it ready to sell and just have a few things to move out of there, then clean it all up and it'll be on the market! Anyone need a 32 acre deluxe horse facility with a regulation small dressage arena, five stalls, a heated tack room, loads of storage, etc. etc.? Not to mention a 3 BR 2 1/2 bath house, two stories with a full basement. It won't be listed for maybe another month, but if you're interested, let me know! It's located in Montgomery County, Ohio. Beautiful place. And it has a nice heated and air conditioned art studio too!

As for "getting on with my artistic life" . . . if I stay away from art or writing for too long, my hands get itchy to get back to work. This *moving stuff* has kept my mind and body too occupied for me to do anything creative for MONTHS! Si U recently started taking a clay class at the Lebanon YMCA. It's been years since I've used water based clay except for a little relief of a lion's head that I did last summer for fun (still haven't glazed it, but it's fired). I thought it would be wise for me to get good at this medium again because I wanted to take a figurative (human) workshop from Phillipe Faraut, who uses water-based clay in his workshops. So here I am, working in that kind of clay and getting FRUSTRATED because I *KNOW* plastilene and Super Sculpey inside out, but water-based clay is fussy and not as easy for me to work in. It has its uses, and I want to improve my skills with it, so I'm soldiering on in this class where the other class members are making adorable little animals that are actually whistles, or tiles with low reliefs of various things (frogs, etc.) carved into them, or throwing pots. I'm making a sculpture of a lady whose dress is blowing in the wind. Here are some pictures of her as she is right now:

Part of my problem is that I can't decide if she's in a heavy Victorian type dress or a filmy modern dress of some kind. I'm leaning toward Victorian, I think. Her hair will be down and flowing in billowing waves. After years of sculpting Friesians, I can do hair! She may be holding a large picture hat against her dress, I'm not sure yet. She's a bit awkward to me in a lot of ways, but she has an innate grace that l like a lot. I don't know if I'll fire her or not. If she isn't up to my standards, I may not.

I've consulted with my figurative sculpting GENIUS friend, Tamara Bonet (www.tamarabonet.com) on this piece and she's given me a lot of helpful pointers. As you'll see if you look at her page, she's WORLDS better than I am at figurative art and working in water-based clay. I really appreciate her help with improving my figurative and water-based clay skills!

I had decided earlier this year that this would be a year of taking workshops for me. I need my creative batteries recharged after all this moving, and I certainly want to improve my skills with various media and with figurative sculpting in particular. So to that end, I've signed up for two American Academy of Equine Art (www.aaea.net) workshops (a perk of membership is lower workshop fees, yay!), the first an equine workshop with Morgen Kilbourne ( http://www.artbymorgen.com/) who works in various media I want to learn more about, as well as making lovely horse sculptures. The second one is a jewelry workshop with Lisa Perry (http://www.lisaperry.com/), who's a wonderful lady I enjoy talking with (we chatted for over two hours in her booth at the Quarter Horse Congress one year and our conversation never slowed down at all!) and who is a truly gifted sculptor and jeweler. The third is with Phillipe Faraut (http://philippefaraut.com/index.html), a brilliant figurative sculptor who has a lot of videos on YouTube, tools of his own design and lots of other helpful stuff available through his website and his classes. I'm excited about these workshops!!

I'll keep working in this clay class at the Y until I get my studio ready to go - hopefully not much longer (I'm enjoying the class, but I do need to get back to my "business" work!) I hope to find some "playful" classes later this year that will just be fun explorations of creativity - or maybe I'll go back to the Y and make some whistles - those look like fun to make!

I've decided to move my blog to my website rather than using Blogger anymore. I hope my followers there will move over here!

It's a new year. I have a new studio (not completely moved into yet) and new creative energy, probably because it's been so long since I could do creative work (due to the move from the farm where we lived for 18 years to this wonderful new one closer to our kids). I'm eager to get my hands back in the clay, and interested in trying some new materials and methods! I've been looking at workshops I might attend - a sculptor friend told me about quite a few places that give sculpting, art and craft workshops. And I just learned that the YMCA we joined recently offers a clay class (water-based clay). I'm going to try it out tomorrow evening and see what I can learn. It'll be fun to get in the clay, and before my studio's finished too!

I'm intrigued with the idea of using glass in some of my creations. I don't know how I'd do it yet, but I was a stained glass artist before I became a sculptor and I just love glass. Perhaps I can come up with some interesting way to combine media - perhaps not. But exploring the possibilities will recharge my creative batteries in good ways, I believe! And taking some workshops will be beneficial - it's always good to network with other artists and learn new ways to approach art.

I have quite a few ambitions for this year. I hope I can accomplish them! I want to show my horse again, which I haven't been able to do for a couple of years due to health issues, and then this past year, my daughter used him to earn points for her silver medal. I was happy to loan him to her. She's the one who trained him to do flying changes, series changes, and all the other things he had to do to show Prix St. Georges, so I was happy she was able to benefit from his training (her horses aren't at that level yet). The two big obstacles to overcome before I can show him is to get my stamina back and get him to go well in a snaffle again (he really goes best in a double, but I'm not a third level rider yet . . . or even a solid first level rider! But hope springs eternal that we'll find a way to show together!)

I want to finish and cast a sculpture I started years ago of my horse Jack and my hubby's late horse, Pepper, playing. I started it and commissions got in the way, and then the cost of casting it made me set it aside. I sold a second life-size of Nanning a few months ago (he's in the process of being cast now), which gives me the funds to cast this piece and others, as well as attending some workshops! "Horseplay" (the one of Jack and Pepper) is a big piece. I don't know if there will be a market for it, but it will be a nice piece for my husband and I to enjoy, since it's portraits of two horses we had, enjoyed and loved a long time (We had Pepper 18 years - he was 28 when he died. I've had Jack for almost 11 years).

I want to PLAY with art more than I usually do. I don't know if I'll cast the playful pieces or not, but if they're good, I probably will. I have some fun ideas, not all of them horses, not all of them bronze. And I want to play with painting some more too. I'm not a horrible painter, I've just never done anything I felt like showing anyone or that I felt was worth selling. If I work at it a bit more, I might be able to paint to my satisfaction - and it would be fun. At least, it will be fun trying!

I have a novel to finish and another to write, and I have other ideas I need to write. I could certainly use more than 24 hours in a day!! Or at least I would appreciate the ability to work a lot faster than I normally do!

One thing I'm really looking forward to is the February release of an anthology which includes a short story of mine, "Lisa Goodman, Writer." This story is unusual for my work because it's both a short story(I normally write novels) and a horror story (I normally write fantasy)! I'm delighted it was accepted to this anthology! The stories were all written by members of the Western Ohio Writers Association. The main requirement for each story (other than being well-written and interesting) was that they be set in the Miami Vally (the region in and around Dayton, Ohio). A publisher contacted our group asking us to do an anthology for them. Not all the stories submitted got in - there was a tough editorial board deciding which ones to accept. I'll post ordering information on www.LyndaSappington.com as well as my Facebook page when it's available.

I hope 2012 was good to you, and that 2013 will be even better! And I sure hope I have this blog set up properly so it will post where I want it to! Happy New Year!

Author

Lynda Sappington is a sculptor producing mostly bronze, mostly horses, in sizes from miniature to monumental. She is also a published author of three books, one a sculpting how-to, the other two fantasy novels.